writer + academic + curator:Dr Rebecca Harrison

I am a feminist writer, academic and curator who fell in love with cinema as a child (lots of late nights getting to stay up and watch 50s Hollywood movies with my grandparents saw to that) and now write and talk about film whenever possible (which, fortunately for me, is most of time!). I'll watch anything: from blockbuster kids' films to artists' video, and from British wartime melodramas to indie flicks. Oh, and Star Wars, of course. You can find my CV below.

I am a freelance critic and have contributed to discussions about film for various media outlets, including Sight and Sound, New Statesman, STV and the BBC.

I am also Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, where I have been based since 2016. I am programme director of the Masters in Film Curation, and also teach film history at undergraduate level. My research aims to create feminist counter-histories of cinema, and tends to focus on film and media technologies - such as my last project, which explored the connections between cinema and transport in British culture, and resulted in the book From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity. My current projects examine a) the manufacture of early British film apparatus using materials from the colonies and b) the use of code, such as software and algorithms, to produce and distribute the Star Wars franchise. In all of my work, I am interested in revealing how gender, race, sexuality and class inform visual culture and our experiences of it. You can read more about my research and academic work here.

And, finally, I am the founder of the Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival, which launches in November 2018 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts. This is a festival that will provide a platform for women to share film, performance (theatre, dance and spoken word poetry), music, and other visual arts in the city.

A little more about me...

​EXPERIENCE2016-: Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow2015-2016: Lecturer in British Cinema, University of East Anglia2014-2015: Teaching Fellow, UCL

INVITED TALKS2018: 'Decoding Gender in Star Wars,' McGill University, March 21.2018: ‘Women and Nursing Onscreen in the First World War,’ University of Southampton, February 13.2017: ‘Rethinking the Panicking Audience: Class, Urbanism and the Train Effect in Early British Cinema,’ University of Warwick, March 1.2016: ‘The Audience of Train Effect Films,’ Institute of Historical Research Film History Seminar, October 20.

RECENT PRESENTATIONS2018: ‘Fuck the Canon: Centralising Women’s Screen Media in the Post #MeToo Classroom,’ Women’s Film and Television History Network, University of Southampton, May 23-25.2018: ‘Attacking the Clones: Decoding the Woman Problem in Star Wars,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Toronto, March 14-18.2017: ‘Me and Mabel: Rewriting Mabel Normand’s Past as a Feminist Film Historian,’ Women and the Silent Screen, Shanghai, June 16-18.2017: ‘Class and the Train’s Effect: Reinvestigating the Panicking Audience,’ British Silent Film Festival Symposium, April 6-7.2017: ‘The Afterlife Onscreen: Cinema and Spiritualism in the First World War,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, March 21-26.2016: ‘All Quiet on the Home Front: Evacuee Children and a Silent Cinema Revival in the Second World War,’ British Silent Film Festival Symposium, King’s College London, April 28-29.2016: ‘Sweethearts of the Skies: Gender, National Identity and the “Aviatrix”,’ (with Rachel Kapelke-Dale), Flying Through the Thirties, UCL and Croydon Aerodrome Museum, April 16.2016: ‘“Away from the Village, the Cinema, Everything”: Film Entertainments for Evacuees in the Second World War,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Atlanta, March 30-April 3.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT2017: ‘Travellers in Two Lands: Revisiting Britain’s Railway Cinemas,’ Cample Line Arts Centre, Scotland, November 26.2017: Public talk and discussion about women projectionists in conjunction with the AHRC-University of Warwick Projection Project, Flatpack Festival, Birmingham, April 9.2017: Talk on Suffragette for Glasgow Film Festival Schools’ Week, Glasgow, February 9.2016: ‘First World War Ambulance Trains Onscreen - Then and Now,’ National Railway Museum, September 10.

TEACHINGI am programme director for the MSc in Film Curation. I convene three courses: Materials of Film Curation, which explores film apparatuses, formats, archives and ephemera; Practices of Film Curation, which offers a space to produce creative work; and the Work Placement, via partnerships with various festivals and archives.

I also teach undergraduate History, Aesthetics and Genre. In 2017, I redesigned the course in the wake of the #MeToo movement to only screen films directed by women. The screening list includes women of colour, queer women and trans women and encourages students to challenge white, patriarchal canon formation, and to think about the history of the screen from new perspectives.